Her father was not a kind person. That did not mean that he was a cruel person. He was just somebody that seemed to live at the house, not bothering to relate to anybody. The only person that merited more than a barely whispered order (he always spoke softly, as if he could not be bothered to raise his voice) was her mother. And even then, all their conversations were clinical and about daily management of the household, a lot like two accountants meeting to discuss the current situation of some company they did the books for.

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Davidson Creek was not the official Observer on Systematic Worlds Contact and Evaluation Ship 104. He was not even the assistant to the official Observer. The nearest description to his actual function would be intermittently tolerated companion of the assistant to the official Observer. His status as a human being from the Sol system (not yet officially contacted) prevented him from holding any more impressive rank.

His status as a human being also prevented him from sleeping comfortably. The day cycles were too long and though he desperately tried to adjust, his rhythms just couldn't do it. What time was it?

He checked his watch. 5:04 Eastern Standard Time. AM or PM he didn't know. He'd lost count of the days somewhere near Arcturus. It was definitely 1942 though, and he was pretty sure it was August. As far as ship time was concerned, it was the middle of the night. And he was starving.

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Some times you are lucky enough to hear a great story. I can't say that this was one of those times. The following is represented exactly as it was told to me. Verbatim.

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You pour the last of your now semi-warm sake from the carafe into your ceramic choko. It fills the shallow glass only halfway and you sip from it slowly, trying to draw out the time. Down the bar from you is a group of sararimen who are getting steadily drunker and louder. From their slurred speech, you gather they are celebrating the fact that their division has made its quarterly projections for the second time, or something bullshit like that. "Fucking peasants..." you grumble not too quietly between sips of sake, but the sararimen do not hear it because they are busy toasting themselves again.

Your name is Shinji Takagawa, a member of the notorious Yamashita Syndicate in Tokyo, and you've been sitting at this sushi bar for the last four hours silently eating, getting drunk, and watching game shows with the sound turned off on the plasma screen TV behind the bar. Usually this sushi bar is pretty quiet place to kill an evening, but these drunken sararimen are making it intolerable. When the waitress comes to see if you need another drink, you just grunt that you want your bill.

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Tattooed across his chest was the phrase, "My mean right hook." It was something he talked about all the time. One guy would say, "Says who?" Another would say, "Yeah? You and what army?" A third would say, "How you gonna pull that off?" The answer was always the same.

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You are an African-American living in a crack house in a New Orleans slum. You decided to stay and weather out Hurricane Katrina since you were not sure if you could score crack at any of the evacuation centers. The windows of the crack house were already boarded up, you had a couple days worth of rocks and some Fiddy Cent CDs to listen to on a portable boom box. In addition, most of your fellow crack heads had abandoned the house, leaving you to rummage through their stuff for stray crack rocks. You find a couple.

When the worst seems to be over, the levee breaks and water floods into your crack house. That's okay. You grab your boom box and crack pipe and run up to the attic. You are lucky and water doesn't reach to the roof like it does the houses down the block.

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They can ignore us no longer. Our message is being beamed out from every satellite, every tower, and through leagues of fiber optic. The Movement is gaining momentum thanks to the courage and dedication of the few. I am proud to say I am among those few.

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Don't believe the hype. Don't believe the carefully planned celebrations or the partisan pundits, or the protests that derided it all as the next coming of Sodom and Gomorrah. Last week was nothing more than quiet fart in the political world; an election that was decided almost two years ago. You would think the election of the first female President of the United States would be a grander statement; the progressive values of our nation confirmed for the whole world to see. For me, it was muted by the fact that it is Hillary Clinton who was voted in. It is creepy to think that since I was eight years-old, the President of the United States has been named either Clinton or Bush.

An upside can be seen in the fact that it is unlikely we will ever have another president named Bush again. The scandal that has dominated his last term was so disgusting, grotesque, and just plain bizarre that it must have made the electorate nostalgic for Clinton's sexual appetites. Though like Clinton's troubles, Bush's were not sufficient to have him removed from office, they have completely destroyed the Republican party as we know it. As well as the Presidency, the Democrats now are firmly in control of the House, and are only two members short of a majority in the Senate as well. Champagne bottles were being cracked in the offices of a party many had written off for the past decade.

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Making a new tunic reminded me of how far I had to go. I was using a lock-stitching awl, which was a manufactured artifact, and waxed cotton thread which was not of my own making. The leather was mine; I had killed the pig, skinned it, and tanned its hide myself. I had colored it with soot and vegetable dyes. But I had used a razor knife to cut it, more technology. One day I would have to take up flintknapping.

I wanted nothing to do with the world of other humans or their tools, but my childhood was spent working toward the Ph.D. I would eventually receive in Physics, not learning the survival arts any hunter-gatherer would take for granted. Still, I had made much progress. I sowed and I planted, I kept my own seasonal calendar, I hunted and I preserved and prepared my own food. I built and thatched my own small cabin. I did not use electricity or refined fuel. It was a calming way to live, and I was more physically fit than I had ever been. It was almost possible, sometimes, to forget that I was never really alone.

But while I was making my new tunic, the phone rang.

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One day you die in a tragic and terrible accident.

You are in the front office of Heaven speaking with God.

"My goodness," he bellowed. "What an utter waste of a life you are. Deviant pornography, free software and MP3s, and don't even get me started about what you did to that Kuro5hin site..."

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